


won't lie, won't laugh, won't cry!

by thimbleoflight



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, also uh. gore., and in which marcus cutter has his cake and eats it too., but I don't know if it needs to be tagged, featuring cutter as Action CEO Man in a lot more dangerous situations than he has any right to be in, in which kepler is jerked around on a metaphorical chain for roughly 4500 words, in which miranda pryce has trouble deciding if kepler will interfere with The Work, obviously all warnings for the questionable nature of a relationship between cutter and kepler, really the villain of this piece is marcus cutter because. nothing bad happens to him., there's some side Marcus Cutter/Miranda Pryce in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 05:12:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14825931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimbleoflight/pseuds/thimbleoflight
Summary: Warren Kepler is in over his head.





	won't lie, won't laugh, won't cry!

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for the dubiously consensual relationship between Cutter and Kepler, and also for body horror/gore etc, because Miranda takes Cutter apart briefly at the end for some maintenance and it is not pretty. Also if you are not super into Pryce/Cutter then this may not be the fic for you.

 

“Have you met my counterpart, Dr. Miranda Pryce?”

Cutter turned a hand palm up, gesturing towards the woman next to him. He inclined his head towards Miranda Pryce. As close as Warren had ever seen Cutter get to a bow.

—Counterpart. A curious turn of phrase, Warren thought. A stupider man might have tried to determine her rank from that. Warren Kepler, not a stupid man, knew that it meant that, whatever Miranda Pryce’s rank was, it was higher than his own.

The woman before him blinked, a disturbingly mechanical motion, accompanied by a clicking he didn’t quite understand, but her eyes—

Warren felt a shiver run up his spine. What had happened to her _eyes?_

“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said, holding out a hand, and Warren shook it.

“Major Warren Kepler,” said Warren, taking her hand.

“Yes,” she said. “Marcus has told me _so_ much about you.”

He almost flinched at her voice. Miranda Pryce’s was a voice that put Warren in mind of a computer fan, stopping and starting. The flat expression on her face didn’t match her voice—which meant, as good an actress as she could be with her mouth open, when she ceased to speak, Warren had the impression that he might as well have been speaking to a brick wall.

“All good things,” said Cutter. He beamed.

That was, Warren decided, one of those times where the word ‘good’ might need further defining. He could think of many things that Miranda Pryce might know about him from that description, depending on from whose point of view—Cutter’s or Goddard’s—you were using the word _good_.

She blinked again.

“I’m afraid I can’t return the compliment,” said Warren. “But am I speaking to an author of Pryce and Carter’s—?”

“Oh, good, you’ve read it,” said Pryce. “I suppose I have Marcus to thank for that? That will make everything that’s about to happen so much easier.”

* * *

 

Warren’s small shuttle landed in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and it was about an hour before a Goddard aircraft showed up in the middle of the clouds on the horizon. When the ladder descended, Warren and his assistant made their way back up. In all truth, Warren was intending to put in a _hiring request_ the instant they got back to base—but he let Cousteau climb back up, collapse onto the floor of the aircraft, and roll over onto his back. Warren got to his feet.

“Welcome back to Earth!” said Cutter, brightly. “Hope your flight wasn’t too bad. It’s a real doozy, landing in full gravity again! I sure hope Ross 154 didn’t treat you _too_ bad.”

He felt lightheaded. Should’ve exercised more, he thought.

“—What’s this?” Cutter was saying.

Cousteau was panting as though he’d just run a marathon, not even trying to get to his feet.

“Get up,” said Warren, irritably.

He made no move to do so.

“Oof,” said Cutter. “He might be dead.”

Warren glanced down at his clearly-breathing companion.

Cutter put a toe on Cousteau’s shoulder, nudging him gently towards the open floor of the aircraft they’d just climbed up through.

Cousteau tried to scramble to his feet.

“I hear you gave Warren some… trouble,” said Cutter. “You want to tell me, in your own words, what happened?”

Warren folded his hands behind his back.

“He’s been disciplined, sir.”

“Oh.” 

If Warren could have dared to look at Cutter’s face, he was sure he’d have seen a perfectly crafted pout, just enough to convey disappointment without warping Cutter’s features.

There was a flash of movement, out of the corner of Warren’s eye, a blur, as Cousteau fell backwards, through the hole in the floor, the ship moving too fast for Warren to hear a splash. Warren thought—though he couldn’t be sure—that Cutter had simply elbowed the man, knocking him off his feet. It was easy enough for Warren to picture. Just a touch of leverage, Cutter wasn’t a large man after all, but in just the right place, and Cousteau would’ve been bent over with pain.

“No room on board,” said Cutter, “for anyone dead. You know, Warren, I’ve been doing some searching. I think you need a new right-hand man, don’t you think? It’s time for an upgrade. Might send you out again soon. Things are getting a little hairy out in the Hermes airspace.”

“Yes, sir,” said Warren.

“Let’s get a little more bang for our buck,” said Cutter. “We’re heading off to San Francisco. Might as well, when we’re on this side of the country anyway! You ever been on a _trolley_ , Warren?”

* * *

 

Miranda Pryce, nearly half a foot shorter than Warren even in her heels, walked so fast that Warren very nearly had to jog to keep up. She walked faster than Cutter, and that was… saying something.

She didn’t speak, either. She punched code after code into the doors, long after Warren had lost track of most of the twists and the turns that they’d taken. The basements of the office in Cape Canaveral were utterly labyrinthine—lights flickered on as they walked through halls, no need to light this place perpetually when it was such a ghost town—

But sometimes they turned a corner, took a doorway into a room and walked past a sea of tiny cubicles, and though no footsteps could be heard nor could anyone be seen at any of the dozens of desks in the room, the lights would be on. Once, Warren even saw a computer monitor at a desk, brightly lit with an open window on the screen of an email client.

“Humbling, isn’t it?” said Pryce. Her heels struck the carpet, a steady, thumping rhythm, and Warren could feel the vibrations in the floor, their steps out of sync.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Warren, more out of reflex than actual comprehension.

“You’re lost,” she said. “You don’t know where we are, or that half of these departments even existed.”

She was ahead of him, but Warren wondered if those mechanical eyes could look out the back of her own head, if she could see him as he grimaced. So it’d been intentional, keeping him away from here.

“Yes, sir,” said Warren.

“Any questions?”

Marcus Cutter, at this point, would have flashed him a cheesy, sharp grin, and trilled, _I don’t bi-iiite! Unless you ask nicely._

Pryce, Warren was unsurprised to find, was not so… personable.

“Don’t I… need to know about this?”

“Why?”

He thought of the computer screen, left open. Hell, even the morons upstairs, with just enough security clearance to walk through the doors, pick up a ringing phone, and say into it _Hi, this is So-And-So with Goddard Futuristics, how can I help you?_ knew to _lock_ their damn _computers_. Warren didn’t even have a desk any more, and he’d had that drilled into his head!

_Simmer down_ , he reminded himself. _You think they haven’t got a reason for acting the way they do, that’ll be the end of you._

“Understood, ma’am.”

“I’m taking you to my office,” she said, after a moment’s silence. “There’s some information about the Sensus 150 unit that you’ll be dealing with in a few months that may be useful for you to know before you head out to Los Angeles.”

“Thank you,” said Warren.

They walked down another hallway. It was Pryce who spoke first.

“Marcus likes you,” said Pryce, finally. “I think you read him well, and he likes a spark in his employees. A little bit of… ambition, someone who’s willing to push back and ask for more information than they’re given initially, to show what they can do with it. I believe he’s told you so, yes?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You seem to be learning fast,” said Pryce, “since Marcus speaks so highly of you and I haven’t heard anything but _yes_ , _understood_ , and _thank you_ , but I’ll spell it out for you. I like to give Marcus’s favorites a chance, Marcus being mad at me puts such a damper on my day. I will give you the information you need to know. You will never, _ever_ need to ask me again if you need to know more than you do, because I have already considered it, and decided that you don’t.”

“Understood, ma’am,” said Warren.

“I am not Marcus,” she said, finally.

“No, ma’am.”

Pryce’s voice had a smile in it.

“Good job, Colonel.”

* * *

“Warren?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shoot him.”

Warren Kepler raised his gun, and shot the man in front of him.

There was nothing particularly surprising about the way that the man slumped forward, at least not to a man who had shot countless people before this moment, nothing that Warren could hear over the shot ringing in his ears. The plans in his hand spilled out, blood seeping in to the corners. _Should’ve just taken a USB drive_ , Warren thought, _like any other good corporate spy in the year 2011_. It was probably just the copy of the blueprints for the VX5 engine, too—hardly worth dying over when the real trick of the machine was in Pryce’s work. Mr. Cutter didn’t wince, even when some of the splatter hit his suit.

Warren holstered his gun again, at a wave of Cutter’s hand.

He’d found, during his time in the field at Goddard, that he really… enjoyed listening to Cutter. Being a bodyguard had never really suited him, except, it seemed, when he was guarding Cutter. It was a strange feeling, to stand up straight and know that all he had to do was move with Cutter’s voice, as Cutter spoke—

This was the way that he had come to expect his own crew to respond to his own orders.

But it was the first time he’d understood what that was like. Did Jacobi or Maxwell feel this way, he wondered? The surety that the man giving you the orders knew everything that there was to know, had taken it all into account, and all you had to do was step in time?

A long time ago, he’d been in the army. He’d never felt like _this_ , back then. He’d never felt like _this_ , under Major Littlewood. There was a liberation in it, to reach for a gun with only the twitch of an eyebrow for a command, or to block an attacker’s knife before Cutter needed to register surprise, the way a hand could move to catch before the mind knew that an object was falling.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Cutter was saying, brushing his hair over his forehead again and smearing a small fleck of blood.

“Sir, your—”

Cutter looked down at himself, seeing nothing. Warren really had tried to be careful.

“On your face,” said Warren, who usually found himself only speaking the necessary words to Cutter. “Ah. On your forehead—”

In response, Cutter drew out a handkerchief.

“Why don’t you get it, then, Warren?” he asked. “Makes more sense that way, really.”

Warren took the handkerchief, careful not to touch Cutter’s hand. He dabbed at the blood, no contact between his hand and Cutter’s face, and only managed to smear it across his face.

“Sorry, sir,” said Warren. “Just give me—”

“Oh, do what you need to do,” said Cutter, “you silly, straight-laced _macho man!_ ”

His voice trailed off, lips curving up in a smile, as Warren cupped his chin with his other hand. Cutter’s face was smooth, as though he never needed to shave, though Warren had seen razors tucked away inside suitcases when they’d traveled together. He wiped at the blood again, this time holding Cutter’s face still, thumb against Cutter’s jaw, but steadfastly avoiding Cutter’s dark brown eyes.

He wanted—

He _wanted_ Cutter to lean into his hand. Once he’d thought about it, he couldn’t take it back, couldn’t push it from his mind. Cutter’s cheek, soft against his palm, his eyes searching Warren’s face, it would be so easy to—

“Better?” asked Cutter. “Less… grisly? You know, a little bit of blood can do wonders for an intimidation factor in a meeting, and we _are_ on our way to one.”

Warren felt a chill run up his spine. _You’ve really done it now_ , he thought to himself, with no evidence at all that Cutter wanted him dead.

“There’s still some on your suit, sir,” said Warren, after a moment.

Cutter’s smile widened.

“Oh,” said Cutter. “How kind of you to mention. Not quite worth it to wipe the blood from my face when it’s all over my suit, though, is it? Oh well! Eyes front, Major, that’s what I need you for!”

Warren dropped the handkerchief back in Cutter’s hand. Cutter tucked it away, and Warren followed him, knowing down to his core that no one who saw him after Cutter would ever be afraid of him again.

* * *

Field missions blurred together after a while, even the ones where he didn’t have Cutter with him.

He’d always report to the man directly afterwards. By all rights, being the director of intelligence operations should have meant that he wasn’t in the field, but—well, Warren had never wanted to give up field work, and Cutter—

“I just don’t see a point in pulling you away from what you’re good at,” said Cutter, in his office, after a particularly harrowing mission.

“Thank you, sir,” said Warren.

“But you want more, don’t you?” asked Cutter.

What more was there besides top of the department, and access to the Black Archives?

Cutter smiled, and Warren felt that same chill run down his arms, that roller-coaster high of the tick-tick-tick before the drop.

“Of course.” Warren paused. “If you think I’m ready, sir.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Cutter. “We’ve got so much in the works, Warren, I really just can’t wait to show it all to you!”

* * *

 

“You broke your leg,” said Cutter, softly, and Warren woke up in a hospital bed. “I brought you flowers!”

“Thank you, sir,” said Warren.

The mission began to come back into clarity now. Good, old-fashioned, sabotage of a competitor’s factory. Child’s play, except, of course, Warren had gotten hurt, just the same as any kid who took a hill they’d been down a thousand times on their bike, thinking they could handle it faster than before.  A mistake shouldn’t have merited a visit from Cutter, but then, Warren’s mistakes always seemed to do just that, didn’t they?

_Marcus’s favorite._

He couldn’t _not_ look Cutter in the eye, at this angle, couldn’t turn his eyes away from really looking at Cutter’s, for the first time. Cutter had brown eyes, long-lashed and pretty, under a pair of eyebrows that, while thick, had clearly been tweezed recently.

Warren had never been a man to turn a blind eye to the truth, but this one was hard to face—not, surprisingly, because Warren didn’t believe it, or didn’t like it, but simply because Warren wanted, a little desperately, for it to be true.

( _Marcus’s favorites_ , Warren reminded himself, because that had told him more than anything else she’d said.)

Ms. Young walked through the halls of Goddard Futuristics, head held high, chin up, irritated by Marcus Cutter and his reliance on her—cold and impartial, to the last. Pryce was more matter-of-fact—Cutter adored her, spoke of her reverentially, but she only ever spoke of him with at best fondness. Warren, though he had thought that he had long since grown past hero worship, could not name the emotion that he felt when Cutter praised him.

_It isn’t real_ , he told himself, finally. _You_ know _what he’s like._

Ambitious, manipulative—and he had Warren, whatever Warren knew about those things. _You’re like me_ , Cutter’d said. Warren could only _hope_. Warren wanted to be there, when Cutter won whatever this long battle was.

“They got your cheek, too,” said Cutter, moving in close.“They say you were knocked unconscious when you fell from the building. It’s a wonder that we even extracted you. Of course, I’m having everyone looked into. Can’t let them leave you in the field like that.”

Cutter ran a thumb over Warren’s cheek, jostling a bandage that Warren just barely began to recognize as the blur in the corner of his eye, and he swallowed. Warren, without thinking, reached a hand up—not to _stop_ Cutter, never to stop him, but to hold him there.

Cutter, if he noticed, made no noise, spoke nothing to tease or startle—he simply leaned down, and pressed his lips to Warren’s.

If you’d asked Warren Kepler what a kiss from Marcus Cutter would have been like, he would’ve said cold. Only children thought snakes were slimy, anyone who’d ever held one knew how scales were velvet soft and dry as a desert if you ran your hand the correct way down them, and that running your hand back the other way was a mistake you didn’t make more than once.

But Warren had been… mostly wrong about all that.

Mr. Cutter, same as any man, had soft, warm lips, and under Warren’s hands his skin prickled in goosebumps, all up and down his arms where Warren reached up to hold him with the free hand, that wasn’t already holding Cutter’s wrist in place. He was slender—Warren could have swept him up, had they been standing, but he was already beginning to feel terror crawl back up his spine, the feeling that he’d, somehow, overstepped, even as he opened his mouth, desperate to keep the contact between them. He shut his eyes, half out of fear and half out of a desire to only focus on Cutter’s lips, the way that Cutter’s arms flexed under his grip, as he reached up to touch Warren.

The kiss broke when Warren let go of Cutter’s wrist, and opened his eyes again.

“Worth it, Warren?” asked Cutter softly.

_Yes. Maybe. Could’ve been, if it’d lasted longer._

“Not entirely certain. Sir.”

“An honest answer! I like it.”

Cutter’s eyes, bright and—as far as Warren could tell—still _real_ , gleamed in the dim light.

Warren _wanted_ him.

It was probably impossible not to, Warren thought—even if you knew what he was, knew that by now he was no more or less human than a corpse. You couldn’t tell by touch alone, God knows Warren felt like there was a pulse at his fingertips, and the faint smell of chai on Cutter’s breath, but it was all just… smoke and mirrors, a really damn fine show. A show with soft lips, and round cheeks, and richly shining hair—keen dark eyes, that narrowed as Warren stared him down.

If they’d been anywhere else, Warren would’ve had half a mind to pull Cutter into his lap. If they’d _been_ anyone else, he might have even done it here and now.

“Why don’t you give it another go?” said Cutter.

“…Mr. Cutter,” said Warren, “I am not sure what conversation we are having right now.”

“We’re having a pretty unprofessional one,” said Cutter, ruefully. “Miranda will scold me for being overindulgent _again_.”

(It would be two days before Warren fully parsed those words.)

—Warren kissed him again, this time not bothering to be gentle. Cutter made a small, pleased squeak of a noise, but Warren didn’t believe it wasn’t… planned. Cutter wasn’t surprised by any of this. He shut his eyes, and let Cutter’s hands roam, the embarrassing hospital gown tucked under the sheets.

Was this what he’d wanted? Was it _worth_ it?

God, yes.

* * *

 

“Marcus is sentimental,” said Pryce, over coffee.

Warren had tried not to be terrified at the invitation. The cafe was small, with bright decorations—old magazine covers framed on the walls, _Never Can Say Goodbye_ playing softly over the speakers.

“He likes you,” continued Pryce. “Which I hope you gathered, you’re not a stupid man.”

Years later, in a pod, wrestling with finding a stable orbit around a star seven lightyears away, Warren would remember this conversation. He would remember how sharp Pryce’s eyes were, how he knew, instantly, when they were not so sharp, after a strike to the head—he would remember that she had half-mocked him, half-praised him here, and—he would remember, then, that in this moment, he did not understand.

Was she jealously guarding her counterpart? Was she _protecting_ Marcus from… what, exactly?

“Ma’am, you don’t need to lecture me to treat him gently.”

She shook her head, and leaned back in her chair.

The breeze blew a few strands of hair loose from her sharp ponytail. Her profile, rimmed by the afternoon sunlight, had something of a halo, and Warren wondered, briefly, for a moment, if this was what the artists depicting the saints had tried to paint. She was _resplendent_ , the lines of her mouth were calm, and her eyes searched forward—

No saints like that in the churches Warren had grown up in—not for your average Lutheran kid, but the imagery was there, nonetheless, in the back of his mind, absorbed in a chaotic mess of art history studies. A world he’d never really understood, richly colored, glittering cathedral spires and windows with sharp, calculated edges. She was something out of a time when buildings and tools were crafted to last—

Except her eyes, of which there were far more than Warren could have anticipated, back at Canaveral.

“No, you stupid, half-witted, _macho man_.” She scowled at him. “That’s the thing I really hate, you know. That’s the thing about Marcus. You all underestimate him. Even you, and you’re already _scared_ of him.”

Warren froze.

“I can… _assure_ you that I do not underestimate him.”

She smiled—a humorlous, acid-sharp twist of the lips. Her lipstick had been marred when she’d sipped from her coffee, and, of course, she was still stunning, but a small part of Warren, the part that he thought Cutter probably meant when he said _you’re like me_ that day in the elevator, wanted to reach out with his thumb and smooth it over until the color was even again.

“You can’t help it,” she said, finally. “Someone talks like he does, someone smiles as often as he does, you’ll all underestimate him—and he wants that.”

Warren cupped his own mug of coffee in both hands, too uncomfortable at the thought of a conversation with Pryce to fully enjoy the warmth. The drink was bitter, at least, and he liked his coffee black—he liked the shudder that ran through his shoulders after a sip, he liked the brief, barest moment of the flavor of the coffee before his body registered the acrid aftertaste of it.

“Then why tell me?”

“I think you have a chance, Major.”

_A chance at what?_

As if she heard his thoughts, she continued.

“A chance at doing something great for him. But if you did get in his way,” she added, examining the back of her hand. “I will make sure that you are promptly replaced with an _upgrade_.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You don’t need to say it like you meant it,” she said, picking up her coffee, and taking another sip. “But it would’ve been nice.”

* * *

 

If he looked closely enough, he saw the presence of Miranda Pryce in this room. A jacket, the wrong size for Cutter, hanging in the closet. A few books that would either indicate an interest in biotechnology that Warren wouldn’t put past Cutter but which seemed to be mostly irrelevant to his work. Most damning of all, a small toolkit, which no doubt Cutter had no idea how to use but which, to Warren’s trained eye, seemed identical to the one in Pryce’s laboratory that he’d seen her use to tinker with her eyes.

Cutter turned Warren’s face towards himself, and kissed him, and it was impossible to think of anything else from that point on.

Cutter wanted to be thrown down on his own bed, and Warren obliged gladly. This much he knew how to do—he could lift two of Cutter if he tried and, he thought, Cutter liked to be reminded of that. They fucked like that, clothes still half-on, halfway through flipping for Cutter to ride Warren.

He wasn’t so naive to think he provided anything that Pryce couldn’t. But now, in this moment—for whatever reason—Cutter wanted him.

And Warren wanted him, too, and everywhere Cutter touched him, Warren was desperately aware of his own humanity, his own frailty. Cutter gripped his shoulder, each fingertip digging into his skin, Cutter rested a hand on his chest, and Warren held him close by the wrists just to feel the strength under Cutter’s palms, imagining the bruises they would leave. He wanted to close his eyes except that he wouldn’t see Cutter, mouth half-open and face blissful despite the effort he was making to roll his hips against Warren—

Warren managed, somehow, to hold out until after Cutter spilled out over his stomach and chest.

Times like this a man could forget that he’d been _warned off_ like some kind of unsavory suitor. Cutter’s hand curled against Warren’s cheek, nails dragging over his jaw just barely. A feather-light touch, now.

Cutter, it seemed, was something of a fan of pillow talk. Anyone would be, on 1000 thread count pillowcases, in a rich deep purple. Warren didn’t mind—it was, usually, himself in a relationship who tended to keep the other up. He’d been accused of enjoying the sound of his own voice on more than one occasion.

If anyone enjoyed the sound of their own voice more, it would be Marcus Cutter.

“You should grow out a beard,” said Cutter. “Just a little bit.”

“Wouldn’t look professional,” said Warren, although Cutter murmuring in his ear was a good enough argument on its own.

“That’s what I like about you, Warren,” sighed Cutter. “Such a sense of irony!”

“More a concern for… how I’d look.”

“Oh, and don’t _I_ know how that goes,” said Cutter, voice pitched low, and just a little conspiratorial. “I can tell you though, it’d be a real bump to your intimidation factor. And I know how much you love to be dramatic. Very Clint Eastwood.”

Warren could’ve fallen asleep, to Cutter’s voice.

_You were told he was dangerous_ , a small, rational part of his mind echoed. _You really wanna relax like this around him?_

He couldn’t help it, or, in full truth, he decided that he didn’t want to.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, still half-asleep, “I’ve always been a fan of the clean-shaven look.”

“Oh. Pity.”

* * *

 

“—And he’s all right?”

Pryce’s laboratory was clean, and smelled of bleach, and, underneath that, the acrid smell of something burnt. Warren thought he recognized it as flesh, but he didn’t want to be correct about that.

He didn’t want to be here.

“Of course he’s all right. Don’t tell me you’re concerned! Oh, that’s cute. He’ll like to hear that when he wakes up.”

Warren couldn’t bring himself to look at the table in front of him. Cutter was still—enough so that Warren couldn’t even be sure that he was breathing. He probably _wasn’t_. His bare legs, sticking out of a hospital gown, ended in one familiar foot and in—

“Routine maintenance,” said Pryce, as if they weren’t looking at an entirely detached and… opened foot, to put it bluntly. Warren was very nearly sick. It was bad enough to see the scalpels, worse still to see the blood, so dark that it was almost black under the blue-tinted halogen lights of the lab. “He’ll wake up once I put him all back together. Did you have something for me?”

Mutely, Warren handed her the reports that Cutter had arranged for him to bring. At this time, to this place.

“Hm.”

She took them, without turning to face him.

“Anything else, Dr. Pryce?”

She didn’t answer right way. Warren folded his hands behind his back, assuming a resting position—he knew better than to assume that meant a dismissal.

_Do you need a hand?_ almost crossed his lips, _is there something wrong?_

“You’re welcome to stay,” she said, thoughtfully. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

This was, Warren realized, Pryce-speak for _he told me he was hoping you'd stay until he woke up_. In fact, it was a very generous hint, on her part. She made a careful note on her clipboard, shifting her weight from one foot to another, and then she set her clipboard down on the table.

He didn’t want to stay, and yet he did—couldn’t look at Cutter, couldn’t divert his eyes away. He hadn’t thought Cutter even had blood, or muscle tissue, he’d thought it was all fake—he wondered if Cutter would’ve told him if he’d asked, what all of this _was_.

The questions was slow to form in his mind. He tried to picture himself, standing in front of Cutter, asking something. Anything. It had been easier when he thought it was all fake, somehow, but the blood greasing the scalpels was all too real. _They_ were real.

_Do you want to live forever?_

To the innovator, to the inquisitive—to Cutter, to Pryce, it was a question that was rhetorical, because it was only answerable in the affirmative sense. Always striving, always better. Always _more_. To the soldier—Warren swallowed—of course, it would have to be the other way around.  Would Cutter be disappointed? That he could go thus far, and no further, that he couldn’t follow them down _that_ path? That there was a _best_ , that there wasn't only _better_ , that this was it. That he _wouldn’t._  

Or did Cutter  _expect_  that final divergence in their paths? Did Pryce?

Too late now, Warren realized, to debate those questions. There was only now, and Pryce ignoring him, focused on her work. Warren steeled himself, and reminded himself that, in this moment, he was here, and he was alive, that this final question had not yet been asked of him, and Cutter wanted him here.

“I’ll stay,” he said, and folded his hands behind his back.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Science" by Royworld.
> 
> This is the ramblingly messy result of listening to Kansas too many times and yes, I did save that until the end until after I made you all READ IT. I hope you all enjoyed it because I'm posting it because I decided I am done with it. My computer tells me I created this document on NOVEMBER 26TH OF LAST YEAR. I am DONE. I am CALLING IT for this fic.
> 
> This fic gets a major shoutout to chetungwan on tumblr for saying "Cutter is carefully and deliberately turning himself into an eldritch horror and Kepler is worshipping him" when I tried to describe it. I don't know if that's the fic I ended up writing, but you were SO, SO right.


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